Essays from "The Theosophical Path"
by Talbot Mundy

Sincerity

By Talbot Mundy

April 1924

Most of us pride ourselves on being sincere and reasonable. Modern
systems of government are based on a theory that reasonable men
and women shall elect their representatives, who, after reasoning
out the issues of the day, shall reach decisions reasonably applicable
for the common good. Nothing more annoys an individual than to
be told he is unreasonable and insincere. International irritation
is the invariable consequence whenever one nation's press and
politicians charge the government of another nation with adopting
an unreasonable attitude. Criticism that a creed or dogma is unreasonable
induces frenzy and such rawly irreligious bickering as recently
has broken out between the self-styled Fundamentalists and so-called
Modernists. And we pride ourselves that our irritation is due
to our sincerity.

Just how sincere and reasonable really are we? Man, catalogued
by the scientists as homo sapiens, concedes himself to
be the crowning glory of creation because his reason is developed,
whereas, it is asserted, animals have only instinct and -- it
is again asserted -- flowers, sun, moon, stars, and the imponderable
universe have no intelligence whatever. But can this egoistic
claim by homo sapiens be supported by evidence, in the
light of the very reasonableness, which he asserts is his own
exclusive attribute?

Will this vaunted reasonableness bear sincere scrutiny? How much
of our thinking and our conduct of ourselves and our affairs is
due to what in animals we arrogantly term 'blind instinct'; how
much is due to what in nature we term 'blind forces'? And just
how open-eyed and open-minded are we ourselves, as compared to
the nations, sections of society, animals, vegetables, minerals,
and unknown stars, which we regard as 'inferior' because devoid
of that ability to reason of which we boast?

Webster's dictionary defines reason as "the power or faculty
of comprehending and inferring." What is it that we comprehend?
What is it we infer? Where are we, as a consequence? And whither
is the process leading us? The question requires to be faced.

Do we reason from cause to effect? Do we comprehend causes at
all? Or do we infer imaginary causes, and try to justify the inference
by seeking, from a thousand different motives, to manipulate the
effects of our wrong thinking? In the event that the latter should
appear to be true, are we brave enough, and sufficiently reasonable,
to reverse our mental processes and to face the issue? And if
we refuse to face the issue, in what way are we superior to 'the
beasts that perish' or to the vegetables, which we and the animals
eat?

It is true that we can kill the animals. But they can also kill
us. It is true, we have invented methods for butchering hecatombs
of beasts, which place the beasts at a considerable disadvantage
and appear to make it improbable at the moment that the beasts
will ever gain the ascendancy. But it is also true that organized
hosts of creatures, so small individually as to be almost, if
not quite invisible under the most powerful microscope, can kill
us with much more deadly certainty than we can massacre, say,
elephants or rabbits. Consider the microbe.

We can, and we do kill one another; and we do it with more ingenuity,
more cruelty, and more hypocrisy than can by any stretch of the
imagination be charged against the animals to which we claim to
be superior. We try to exterminate some animals on account of
their alleged ferocity; but if their ferocity is bad, is not ours
worse? Therefore, if they should be destroyed, should we not also
be destroyed? It would appear, judging from the news in the sensational
newspapers, that all humanity is surging forward to destruction;
and although we do not like to believe that, but prefer to solace
ourselves with the delusion that our particular nation, our particular
political system, ourself and our circle of friends are immune
from what we see, more or less clearly, to be impending on the
'inferior' peoples of the earth, it would likely do us no harm
to consider wherein our alleged safety lies, and whether the causes
that we are agreed endanger others are not also at the root of
our own thinking.

It is fashionable nowadays to denounce as a 'knocker' everyone
who discerns and dares to mention faults in the conduct of private,
local, or national affairs, and the imputation is that all such
individuals belong to the undesirable class of selfishly carping
critics who loathe to see prosperity in other people. Alternatively,
whoever cheers noisily for conditions as they are is called a
'booster,' and is supposed to belong to that respectable class
of honest citizens who always loyally fulfil their obligations
and on whom prosperity depends.

But that fashion is not new. The system of labeling oneself and
one's opponents, with the absurd notion of monopolizing all the
credit and assuming none of the responsibility, and with the criminal
intention of masking one's own selfishness, while attributing
ill-faith to one's opponents, is as old as savagery. The fact
that these labels, religious as well as political, are as often
as not chosen for the purpose of self-deception makes no important
difference; it is just as criminal to deceive oneself as to deceive
others, because self-deception is the underlying cause of all
crime.

No one would commit any crime whatever, unless he were first self-deceived;
the inevitable outcome would be too obvious. Unless first self-deceived,
we could never be deceived by others, nor could we ever be induced
to practise deception. We all know this. The very children know
it. The first principle of banking, and of every other successful
business, is to be on guard ceaselessly against self-deception,
and the great majority of failures are attributed to lack of judgment,
which is only another name for the same thing.

There are two outstanding peculiarities of human nature, which
anyone can recognise who dares to examine his own thought processes;
but although we like to pride ourselves on daring, we are seldom
prone to it when we ourselves are to be the objects of experiment.
The two peculiarities are these: that we always seek to transfer
the blame for any sort of evil consequences, from ourselves to
others; and that we will accept any makeshift, any harbor of refuge,
rather than be radical, admit that our philosophy is wrong, and
face the issue bravely reasonable. We pretend to, and to some
extent we do hate insincerity (as for instance when we think we
recognise it in the arguments and acts of others); but it remains
the king-pin, so to speak, of our own and of all the world's calamities.
Until we learn to be sincere, there is no hope whatever of relief
from distress, whether individual or national. And the process
must begin at home. We can never be sincere with others until
we are first wholly sincere with ourselves.

It is an indisputable axiom, discernible in every circumstance
of nature, that like begets like. In Bible-phraseology, we cannot
gather figs from thistles or obtain both sweet and bitter water
from the same spring. Nevertheless, we pretend to try to abolish
crime by hanging criminals; we seek to abolish pain by permitting
vivisection; we pretend to aspire to peace, while openly boasting
of our preparations for 'the next war'; we prohibit alcoholic
drink and censor plays, books, motion pictures, but insist that
our newspapers shall print sensational reports of every abominable
crime. In law we hold each individual responsible for his own
acts, unless it can be proved he is out of his mind, in which
case we lock him up and make ourselves responsible for him; yet
we seek 'salvation' through 'vicarious atonement,' and try to
substitute a 'profession of faith' for downright honesty, as a
solution of the mystery of life after death.

These are only a few of our more obvious absurdities; anyone who
cares to look about him frankly can discover countless others
for himself. They are all due to our besetting sin of insincerity,
which is the armor of ignorance.

The process of insincerity is easily illustrated, and the arguments
by which it propagates itself will occur to everyone the moment
the illustration is given. Consider the question of international
rivalry and what has happened recently in that connexion. Weary
of a sort of warfare that exhausted all the combatants and left
none with a perceptible advantage, the rival governments sent
representatives to a conference, at which it was agreed to limit
the more costly and 'out-of-date' engines of destruction. There
has been a great deal of mutual suspicion since then, as to whether
the governments who agreed to the contract have loyally obeyed
its terms; but there is absolutely no question that every government
concerned is working day and night to supply itself with cheaper
and much more deadly means of making war!

That is no secret. It is openly discussed in the newspapers; and
there are very few newspapers that do not urge their own government
to assume the lead in deadly preparation. The excuse is, that
unless this government is fully prepared to do wholesale murder
on a scale never before dreamed of, that government will take
the initiative and will seize the upper hand by means of ruthless
butchery.

A nice new label has been made for this comparatively ancient
form of international mistrust. But Xenophobia is nothing but
another mask for insincerity -- another way of deceiving ourselves
and imputing the blame either to others or to a psychology over
which we are supposed to have no control. It would be amusing,
if it were not so disastrous, stupid, and yet simple of solution.
The apparent helplessness of individuals takes all the humor from
the situation. The individual who feels inclined to sneer would
do better to remember that the acts and methods of governments
are no more than a large-scale illustration of the workings of
the human mind, his own included.

From the pulpits of a million churches the command is thundered:
"Love ye one another!" There lies the solution certainly.
But without sincerity it is impossible to love.

We are all afraid. Our lower nature, which persists in every one
of us (or we should be invisible to mortal eyes and functioning
on vastly higher planes of being) dreads its own destruction and
deceives us -- even the best of us -- with arguments of ever-increasing
subtilty, of which a favorite one is that we should be at the
mercy of the lower nature of others unless ready at all times
to use dishonest methods for our own defense. But the truth is
that the only absolute protection against treachery is honesty.
The slightest compromise with dishonesty provides an opening through
which the darkest forces surge and gain control of us. It is not
the other man's dishonesty, but our own that endangers us as individuals.
In other words, if we admit one trace of insincerity into our
reasoning the effect is similar to that of poison introduced into
a well; it does not poison one part of the water, but all of it;
and the more colorless and unnoticeable it is, the more deadly
the results.

It is not possible to exaggerate the inevitable consequences of
continuing in insincerity; because the lower nature of every human
being is capable of limitless evil and, if left to its own resources,
is totally incapable of anything but evil. The lower nature of
nations is a multiplication of the lower nature of individuals
in the mass. It is what the churches call the devil. It possesses
a sort of intelligence, which amounts to a keenly alert instinct
of self-preservation combined with mercurial subtilty. It knows
no more of the higher nature than a stagnant pond knows of the
sun that sterilizes it. And it is no more useful as a foundation
on which to raise a spiritual edifice than a desert-mirage would
be as a source of drinking water. Every concession to the lower
nature is of the nature of a bargain with a heartless, conscienceless,
'blind force,' and is of the very essence of insincerity.

The common mistake is to regard sincerity as an emotion. Glimpsed
through the mist of that mistake, it would appear to be the consequence
of action, a variable product subject to the judgment of opinion,
possessing qualities that differ in degree with individuals. Accepting
that fallacy, we find ourselves at a loss for a word with which
to define that stark, uncompromising habit of watchful self-analysis,
which alone insures right activity.

It is customary (perhaps because we like to be respectful) to
speak of the sincerity of politicians, churchmen, and (undoubtedly
because of a desire for self-respect) particularly of ourselves.
And yet, in whichever direction we look, we see in our own actions,
and in the acts of others, the unquestionable effects of insincerity.
A world-wide plebiscite for or against the Golden Rule would certainly
produce an overwhelming, and possibly unanimous, vote in favor
of it, but the vote would be perfectly insincere, and its only
possible result would be a temporary smug self-righteousness and
a delusion that the world was better than it is. Ignorance knows
nothing of sincerity; and sincerity cannot be attained by protesting
allegiance to a creed, whose tenets are obscure and incomprehensible.

Sincerity is impossible without knowledge. We must understand
what we profess before there can be the remotest chance of putting
the profession into practise. And it is surely obvious that we
must understand ourselves before we can hope to understand others
or be qualified to criticize them.

The occult, that is to say the concealed, inmost, meaning of sincerity
is Self-knowledge. It is the only guide to right action. To wait
for sincerity in others before striving to attain it in oneself
would be as useless as to wait for the harvest without troubling
to plant the seed. The Millennium will come when we have learned
sincerity. We shall find it within ourselves -- or nowhere.

The world's problems appear intricate and overwhelming. The more
they are studied, the more impossible it seems that any of the
plans for their solution can provide relief. It is beginning to
dawn on businessmen, and even on the legislatures, that no nation,
and no individual can live unto himself alone but that a disaster
to one section of humanity is sure to be felt eventually in the
remotest corners of the earth. But the converse of that is equally
true, and is immensely more important to consider, because on
it depends the redemption of the human race.

Improvement in any one individual must eventually benefit the
whole world. Therein lies the solution of the whole difficulty,
extremely simple, yet, in common with all simple things, prodigiously
more difficult to do than may appear at first sight. Sincerity
must be the watchword, or the effort is waste. Sincerity, which
knows no thought of compromise, insists that the sole motive for
self-improvement shall be that others may be the beneficiaries;
and that is the exact opposite of all of the methods of self-improvement
that the world endorses.

The Ancient Wisdom, which is the mother of all religions, teaches
that man is the microcosm of the macrocosm, and we can prove this
for ourselves, if we only examine ourselves fearlessly. Within
our own consciousness we may discern every one of the motives
that govern and misgovern all mankind. As individuals we have
no resources and no virtues that are denied to other men; we are
immune from none of the temptations that waylay others; we have
the same destiny, whether or not we recognise it, the same broad
duty to our fellow-men, the same Law for our guidance. And the
only way in which we can obey the Law is by applying it in every
instance to ourselves.

Our lower nature is incapable of comprehending, and consequently
utterly incapable of obeying, the Higher Law. Our Higher Nature
knows the Law. Which of the two is to govern us, which is to direct
our thinking and the acts that are the outcome of our thinking,
is the only real problem we are called on to decide.

We are. Each one of us knows that, if nothing else. In phraseology
that is epochs older than the Bible that is commonly supposed
to be its origin, "it doth not yet appear what we shall be."
Very few are in agreement, even for five minutes at a time, as
to the extremely recent past; and human memory is silent as to
what preceded our birth into this particular existence.

We are; and we are now. Now, and our own consciousness, are the
limits within which we function. Now, is the immeasurable point
where past and future meet. Our consciousness is the immeasurable
point at which the Higher and the lower nature meet. The only
important difference between us and the animals is, that while
the whole universe, ourselves and the animals included, is subject
to the law of evolution, we, as human beings, have reached the
stage of self-direction. We are no longer 'at the mercy' of what
the scientists prefer to call 'blind forces,' but have the privilege
of controlling our own individual destiny by the exercise of will.
We may choose, that is, between the Higher and the lower. We may
control and discipline our lower selves, or we may let our lower
selves continue to deceive us. In either event we shall receive
the full, logical, exactly just, inevitable consequences of our
choice.

In other words, our consciousness -- that of which we are conscious
-- will continue to be better or to grow worse in exact proportion
to our effort to be governed by the Higher Law, by recognising
it, or our submission to the dictates of the lower nature. The
problem is individual in every instance.

Our lower nature is dependable in one, and in only one respect:
it is invariably a deceiver. Never, in any circumstances, does
it tell the truth; because it does not, and cannot, know the truth.
It presents expediency in the disguise of principle and, when
that fails, it flatters us with the suggestion that we are making
sacrifices when we forego personal advantage for the universal
good. It is obvious at once to anyone who communes with his Higher
nature even for a moment, that the universal good inevitably must
include each individual, not excepting him who makes the 'sacrifice';
it becomes at once obvious that the only sacrifice that could
entail the slightest, even momentary disadvantage would be to
let go the Higher for the sake of the lower, foregoing the universal
for the sake of the personal. But the ridiculous delusion of self-sacrifice
persists and propagates the subtilest forms of vanity.

Another favorite method of the lower nature is to frighten or
to flatter us with the belief that we must struggle terribly in
an incessant warfare before the Higher Nature can prevail. But
the Higher Nature knows absolutely nothing of any struggle. The
illustration is at hand, in nature. The moment the light appears,
the darkness disappears; there is no struggle between them. In
the bright light of the Higher Nature the darkness of the lower
vanishes; but as long as one prefers the lower there will be a
struggle to cling to it, and the dawning of the Light into the
consciousness will hurt.

The delusion of struggle is due to insincerity in the attempt
at self-analysis. It means that one of the subtilest forms of
personality is masquerading as a virtue. A sense of humor is the
readiest solvent of that obscure condition, since whoever can
laugh at himself is in a fair way to become impersonal. He is
likely to discern that he has been struggling to benefit his personality
by posing as a student of the Higher Law; whereas the first axiom
of the Higher Law is that no degree of selfishness can possibly
be beneficial, and that the only way in which we can really benefit
ourselves is by first benefiting others.

Sincerity insists that the sole purpose of self-directed evolution,
its only motive, and its constant care shall be, so to discipline,
govern, and improve ourselves as individuals that we may be, not
only not a handicap to the rest of humanity, but an assistance
to it by becoming fit to bear at least our full share of the load.
That is the law of Universal Brotherhood. Recognition of the Law
-- confession to oneself that the law exists -- is the first step.
Sincerity soon follows; and the first stage of sincerity appears
when we find ourselves, even while continuing a certain course,
admitting to ourselves that the course is wrong, instead of deceiving
ourselves that it is right. In the second stage we discontinue
doing what we know is wrong, for the simple reason that by injuring
our own character we are committing a sin against our fellow-man.
In the third stage we see clearly what the right course is, and
from that moment we become a positive force for good.

We are our brother's keeper; but, like the sentinel on duty at
the gate, we keep him by guarding ourselves against the enemy
-- our lower nature.

All the great teachers of whom there is any record have laid down
the law that we must purify ourselves before we may hope to help
others. Jesus of Nazareth is quoted as saying: "Cast out
first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly
to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye"; and that,
with characteristic human insincerity, has come to be accepted
as authentic doctrine by a civilization whose foremost characteristic
is delight in condemnation of its neighbor while continuing its
own self-indulgence in immorality.

But the reason is not far to seek. The two essential facts --
Duality and Reincarnation -- have been overlooked. The 'three-score
years and ten' that statisticians and a prophet have assured us
is about the limit of a human life, have so circumscribed our
view that the task of raising the general standard of morality
appears hopeless, if not useless. The old Latin proverb Cui
Bono -- in colloquial modern English, 'What's the use?' --
must occur in some form or another to every man who assumes that
he was 'born in sin,' lives for something less than a hundred
years, dies, and 'that's the end of it.'

Reincarnation instantly changes the aspect of things and events.
The moment we realize that no effort can possibly be lost, that
no thought and no deed can remain uncompensated, that full and
perfect justice is unavoidable, and that we return into the world
again, and again, and again, to meet exactly the conditions that
our former efforts have deserved, we begin to discern the purpose
and the joy of evolution and to take our part in it with a sincerity
that has no use for self-pity and laughs at adversity as an experience
whose sublime and encouraging purpose is that we may learn from
it self-mastery -- the Key of Life eternal.